Cultural Geography

The University of Groningen is the only university in the Netherlands that offers a Master in Cultural Geography. It is one of the few masters taught in Campus Fryslân. Students are trained with the necessary critical, analytical, methodological and theoretical tools to contribute to place-related liveability in society. Career perspectives vary from governments, NGOs and corporate roles.

Most compulsory courses are taught in Leeuwarden. All courses in the Tourism Geography & Planning track are offered in Leeuwarden. Two compulsory courses for the regular (non-track) programme (Revitalizing Neighbourhoods, Social Impact Assessment) are still taught in Groningen. Depending on the choice made by the student, optional courses for the regular programme may also be in Groningen.

More information about these courses can be found on http://www.rug.nl/frw/education/master-info-frw/courses-master-cultural-geography. Starting from September 2017 all compulsory courses are taught in Leeuwarden.

Each year dozens of students of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences stay at a foreign university as an exchange student. The faculty has exchange agreements with universities in Europe, New Zealand and the USA.

You will find graduates of the Msc. Cultural Geography in a variety of places.

Our graduates get jobs with:

• international organisations, such as UN and EU agencies;
• national government departments;
• regional and local government agencies;
• commercial firms of all kinds
• consulting firms
• non-government organisations of various kinds
• tourist agencies

To optimize the connection between the Master's program and the labour market, we try to stay in touch with our alumni, for example via the LinkedIn group Master Cultural Geography.

During the programme we offer support for your career preparation. The Career Services are provided by the Careers Company and the UG Career Services.

More information about the Careers Company
More information about the UG Career Services

See where our alumni end up in this graphic !

The research at the Department of Cultural Geography is strongly embedded in the research programme of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences.

It is labelled ‘tWIST: Towards Wellbeing, Innovation and Spatial Transformation’. Central in this research are experiences of local communities around the globe. The research in Cultural Geography focuses on place, identity and wellbeing and includes population decline and healthy aging.

Topics of recent research projects are:

• Community participation;
• Aging and wellbeing;
• Innovation and rural transformation;
• Socio-spatial consequences of population decline;
• Heritage; evolution of the historical landscape;
• Nature and health;
• Entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility;
• Employment opportunities
• Housing and the living environment of the different groups in society;
• Social impact assessment;
• Social aspects of new technologies;
• Social aspects of agriculture;
• Social aspects of natural resource management;
• Tourism and (cross-border) regional development; film and music tourism.

The research projects deal with the relations between people and place. Knowing your own 'place' is of fundamental importance for the formation of human identity and well-being. Cultural expressions such as art, architecture, rituals and language, and our knowledge and appreciation of nature and landscape interact with the physical environment to form our live stories and the liveability of places. Therefore, the ways in which we construct space and place are physical manifestations of both our imagination and our self-awareness. This perspective allows you to understand and explain differences between places, communities and the spatial behaviour of humans.

Our research is strongly empirical. Students will become familiar with qualitative and quantitative research methods during the Master, applied to the topics of place attachment, identity and liveability. Innovative research methods such as visual methodologies and location-based applications (social or soft GIS) can be used for the Master Thesis.